The Saga: Part Two; In Which We're Exhausted... No, Really

Confused about why we're in Morocco and not Turkey? Start reading here and here.

So, to pick up roughly where A left off...

We were scheduled to fly out of Istanbul the next morning at about 7:00. After checking the ticket approximately 1,000,000 times to be SURE that we had the date and time right, A and I set one alarm for 3:30 and another for 3:35, (we really didn't want to miss another flight) and went to sleep. Although I was completely exhausted (I know we keep going back to that, but seriously, it was really, really bad) my traitor brain managed to wake me up at about 1:30 that morning whispering "What if neither of the alarms goes off?" "What if we're so tired that we sleep through them?" "What if on the 1,000,001st time I look at the ticket, I realize that really we're supposed to leave at 3:00, not 7:00?" and so on and so forth. Eventually, I gave up trying to get back to sleep.

So. 3:30 rolls around, A gets up, we gather our things and head for the airport. It all seems to be going smoothly until, as we're waiting in line to check our bags, a passport control worker comes up to check our ticket and our passport. After asking some standard questions about where we're going and what we plan to do there, he informs us that, as we don't have visas into Morocco, we have to be out within 90 days. We were aware of that and planned to work around it by either getting an extension from within the country (which we've been told we can do) or by making a day trip to Spain (or wherever) and coming back with a fresh 90-day allowance. Both seem to be pretty common solutions, we certainly aren't planning on over-staying our visa, so no big deal, right?

Well, according to this man, we cannot be issued our boarding passes until we show him our tickets out of Morocco, bought for within 90 days of the current date.

Now, keep in mind that at this point, besides being (surprise!) completely exhausted, we had also just spent massive amounts of money on four plane tickets to Morocco (two for each of us), plus two train tickets, two bus tickets, a hotel stay, and numerous taxi trips - none of which we had budgeted for at all*. Hearing that we were going to have to buy two MORE plane tickets was really more than either of us could handle at that point. But, if it was that or not being able to get to Morocco...And it wasn't like we could just hop on a later flight, because we had grabbed the last two seats available until Sunday.

Fortunately, as far as either of us could tell (no one we talked to spoke particularly good English, so we're still only about 90% sure) all we wound up having to do was make a "reservation" for a ticket, which didn't actually cost any money. They seemed to be much more concerned with the piece of paper formality than anything else, but it was still a pretty enormous scare.

We were, however, able to land in Madrid without incident. From there, we had a 9-hour layover that morphed into a 10 1/2-hour layover because of delays, but we safely landed in Casablanca at about 7:40 (Casa time) that evening.

The flight itself was absolutely beautiful; we took off just as the sun was beginning to set, which let us watch it slowly go down as we flew over Spain. Unfortunately, we were somewhat nervous throughout the trip, because we had to get through passport control, grab our luggage, pass through customs, and get to the airport train all by 10:00 or miss our transfer to the night's last train heading to Rabat (where we're living and where we had a hotel for the night.)

Last time we flew into Casablanca, passport control alone took well over 2 hours, so we rushed there as quickly as we could. Luckily, it went much more smoothly this time, and even though the airport was packed, we were able to get all our things and make it to the train by 8:40 - plenty of time to catch our breath before the 9:00 train out.

Thrilled that we had made it through so quickly and grateful that we should be able to so easily make it to Rabat, we settled back to relax and wait for the train to come. We waited. And waited.

At first we joked about how silly it was that we had expected the train to be precisely on time - had we forgotten how Morocco worked?

At 9:15 I heard a couple angrily complaining in French about how ridiculous it was that the train still hadn't come. Moments later, they stormed out while saying they would just take a taxi. I chuckled to A about how they probably wouldn't do very well in Morocco if a 15-minute delay bothered them so much.

At 9:30, I started needing to go to the bathroom, but didn't want to leave in case we missed the train.

At 9:40, I finally decided to take the chance.

At 9:45, A and I tried to reassure each other that the train to Rabat would almost certainly be running late, as well, and we should be just fine.

At 10:00, I saw a group of men come back from talking to someone at the ticket office. They looked very upset, but I could only pick up bits and pieces of what they were saying.

At 10:10, another group of men came and began spreading the word that the train wasn't coming. Everyone who had been waiting got up to leave.

Most of the people were flooding the ticket office trying to get refunds, but A and I were just focused on trying to make it to the transfer station in time to get that last train to Rabat (which was supposed to leave at 10:45.) We didn't even know whether it was still running, but we were pretty desperate not to be stuck in another foreign city for another night.

The station was so crowded that it took us another 10 or 15 minutes to make our way out to the taxi station. At first we tried to get a taxi to the train station, but we pretty quickly realized that we almost certainly wouldn't make it there in time. At that point we were so exhausted that we decided to just take a taxi all the way to Rabat.

Fortunately, Moroccan taxis are affordable enough that the 1 1/2-hour or so trip was "only" about $85. Unfortunately, we're broke and that's still a lot of money. Anyway, the complications continued as we began driving through heavy fog that made it extremely difficult to see more than a few feet ahead of us. Moroccan drivers being Moroccan drivers, that made him slow down to maybe 70 MPH. Anyway, the complications (sorry, "adventures") continued when we arrived in Rabat. Our hotel, Dar Alia Riad, was actually a riad (basically, a mansion that's been converted into a smallish hotel) set in the center of the medina. Unfortunately, the medina can be difficult to navigate even in the daytime, and it is almost impossible to drive through. Fortunately, I had very specific directions regarding where to have the taxi driver let us off, and exactly how to walk to the riad from there. 

 Seriously, don't try to drive a car through here.

This post is so excessively long, even for me, that I'm splitting it into two parts. 

Next Up: Silly J! Why would you expect things to start being simple?

* Can I just take a moment to once again thank everyone for their extraordinary generosity at our wedding? Seriously, as bad as things were, they would have been much, much worse without all of your help. Thank you so much.